Ambition Knows No Season

Ambition Knows No Season Michael Penn for The New York Times

By WELD ROYAL

Published: January 24, 2008

IN winter in Juneau, Alaska, snow blankets everything, bears hibernate and Grady Saunders, the owner of the Heritage Coffee Company, fills his schedule with trips to balmy coffee-growing parts of the world. He recently got back from a trip to Kona, Hawaii.

Michael Penn for The New York Times

Heritage Coffee stays open year-round, for locals like Barbara DeLong of Sitka, Alaska, who has been a customer for 20 years. Still, Mr. Saunders keeps his cafes and other retail outlets open year-round, even though for at least a third of the year, this tiny city seems an inhospitable place to run a business. Gone are the cruise ships that bring almost a million tourists to this southeast Alaska town from late spring to late summer. Locals number about 31,000, and many of them head for warmer climates as the days become short and temperatures drop. Seasonal changes in the economy are not unique to Alaska, of course. Most of the other 49 states have ups and downs depending on weather, school calendars or annual events. But the intensity of Alaska’s seasonal variation is greater than in any other state or the nation as a whole, according to Dan Robinson, an economist with the state’s Department of Labor and Workforce Development. He said Alaska’s economy loses about 10 percent of its jobs from August to January every year. It starts to gain back those jobs in January.Donald Getz, a University of Calgary business professor and author of “Event Management and Event Tourism,” who has studied small businesses operating in tourist-dependent economies, divides the owners into two types: lifestyle entrepreneurs and business growers. Lifestyle entrepreneurs, he said, want to live in a nice place and use their business income to help sustain their existence in towns that often are expensive places to live. Mr. Getz said these business owners often move with the seasons, running a bed and breakfast in Alaska in the summer, for instance, and another in Hawaii in winter. Business growers, in contrast, are ambitious, and want their operations to turn a profit. “They’re always on the lookout for opportunities that will see them through the quiet season,” he said.Mr. Saunders, 56, who has been in the coffee business for 33 years, falls into the second category. He has developed strategies to see Heritage through the inhospitable months. While summer days are a frenzy of hiring temporary workers, chasing after coffee beans that are missing and helping institutional customers during their busy season, he uses the fall and winter to meet suppliers. “The key to the specialty coffee business is growing better coffee, and for us that means checking out new farms, seeing their growing methods and how they treat their people,” he said. During the quiet season, Mr. Saunders has been to Costa Rica, Panama, Brazil, Kenya and Tanzania and plans a trip to Ethiopia in November.He has also come up with new ways to extend the summer season. Heritage developed a line of in-room single-serve coffee packages for the 150 or so hotels, lodges and bed and breakfasts throughout Southeast Alaska. They start ordering in mid-April, which means Heritage, which roasts and packages its own beans, starts preparing to ship coffee to the hotel industry in March. Mr. Saunders also opened a restaurant in Juneau two years ago that is a short walk from the state Capitol building for the 60 legislators, their aides and lobbyists in town for the legislative session, which starts in January. Some of Mr. Saunders’s diversification ideas have not worked out. He opened a cafe in Seattle, but sold it in a year, he said, after realizing the headaches of managing long distance. Dawn Walsh, 47, and Sydney Mitchell, 43, are also business growers. They are energetic, daring, even a bit crazy. After all, who else would open a boutique for stylish shoes in a town where it rains about 220 days a year and where snow may be on the ground until April? Almost three years ago, Ms. Walsh and Ms. Mitchell started Shoefly Inc., along Juneau’s harbor, across the street from the cruise ship docks. “Real Women Ignore the Weather” was used for an advertising campaign. The store’s shelves are stocked with red and white pumps with four-inch heels by Naughty Monkey, magenta suede shoes by Farylrobin and other footwear from European and American designers. In midwinter customers trickle in, one or two an hour, in contrast to as many as 200 a day in mid-July.

“Having that peak season makes a big difference in terms of what we can stock,” Ms. Mitchell said. That is because shoe manufacturers sell in bulk — a dozen pairs in a particular size and color, for instance. Local customers may buy a pair or two, but the store is not able to sell all of them without the summer traffic. “There are many women in Juneau who are fashion forward, but just not enough of them,” Ms. Mitchell said. The duo finds ways to lure those left in town into the store in cold months. They are currently holding a designer shoe and handbag consignment event. They price and help sell high-end items customers bring to them. They have also expanded. In October, they bought the nearby Hudsons Shoes, a 68-year-old institution that sells more conservative lines. With the purchase came about 150 pairs of unsold shoes from decades ago, including Converse sneakers from the 1970s and antique Buster Brown models for girls. In February, Ms. Walsh and Ms. Mitchell will hold a “vintage shoe sale” to move the historic merchandise. Marketing innovations, economic diversification and regulations have helped to ease some of Juneau’s seasonal swings, according to Lance Miller, until recently director of the Juneau Economic Development Council. Local contractors have found new ways to build indoors when the weather turns bad. The mining industry is much busier than it was a few years ago and the work is year-round. Mr. Miller said international fishing regulations have helped to spread out that industry’s catch periods. But Mark Stopha, a 43-year-old commercial fish seller, said winter remains slow. Mr. Stopha, who owns the Alaska Wild Salmon Company, said he often puts in 18-hour days in summer buying and selling salmon. In winter, he is in his home kitchen inventing new uses for fish. He said about 25 percent of his company’s revenue now comes from products with long shelf lives. Juneau in winter, he said, “is a great laboratory.”“If you’ve got something to try out, people have all the time in the world to talk to you.”